After feeding Seiji all the details of the MetEx raid; the fact that Morti triggered the alarms early and how he killed both Martin and Ajax after they retrieved the chip. Perhaps it was foolish to spill such important details to someone, but he didn’t have time. If he was going to die otherwise, he might as well take the risk. Oddly enough, the ever-jokeful Seiji believed him.

“Morti was always a sly fuck” Seiji grit his teeth. Oh, they did have their fights in the past, namely when Morti started climbing up in the organisation, getting way too cocky for his own good. Back then though, he hadn’t been killing his own, as far as Ajax knew. However, perhaps he should look into that if he survives this. “So what are we gonna do?”

“We’re gonna have to figure that out with what’s left of the day” Ajax seemed a little anxious thinking about the lack of time.

“Why don’t you just ditch the mission? Then he won’t kill you, right?” Seiji asked. It made sense, since the opportunity to kill him would disappear for Morti. However…

“Won’t work. I don’t know how he blocked my power, but he did, and he did that for me. I was clearly his target from the start, Martin was just a loose end. Still, makes me wonder how my power dragged me back still, seems like his power jamming isn’t perfect” Ajax was practically thinking aloud at this point.

“Damn” Seiji scratched his head, hoping something fruitful was appear in his head. “So we have to kill Morti before he kills you?”

Ajax nodded, a little frustrated with the idea. Killing Morti was an easy task, even with the jammer, since he shouldn’t be expecting it. However, they couldn’t be sure the people working with him weren’t at his house with him. Two against possibly ten or twenty didn’t sound like a fair fight; it wasn’t winnable, not without incredible luck or some kind of foresight.

“This is gonna be difficult” Seiji expressed with a morbid expression.

“You don’t have to come. There’s a good chance we’ll di-”

All of a sudden, Ajax felt a hard strike on his arm, coming from Seiji’s fist.

“I’m not gonna just watch you die, bud. Not now that I know of it all. Plus, it’s about time I knocked that cocky bastard off his high horse, straight to hell” Seiji said. “I mean, what are brother for if they watch each other die and do nothing?”

Ajax looked down for a moment, deep in thought. They were really in it now. It wasn’t just his life depending on this, but Seiji’s life too now.

“Thanks, man”

“Don’t sweat it” Seiji placed his hand on Ajax’s shoulder as he rose from the sofa. “Now, time to plan a murder”

Out of nowhere, Seiji summoned a large whiteboard, sliding it across until it was ahead of the sofa. Grabbing a pen off the small groove beneath the board, he began scribbling, mapping out Morti’s place as though he’d done a good bit of research on it before this encounter. Then, they collectively planned a route in. With that, Seiji debriefed Ajax on the cameras in the house, which again, it seemed he’d done some in-depth research on this little, specific subject.

A few hours passed as they scribbled more on the board, erasing any stupid ideas. Now, they had a pretty concrete plan in place, which wasn’t too difficult to perform so long as everything went well. They were assuming there to be around ten others in the house, and they were going to scout out the building beforehand to alter the plan a little later. For now, they had to wait until dark to strike. Security in this day and age was pretty damned good if you could afford it. However, if you had a phone that easily deactivated all that security, things would be laughably easy.

“We have to head back to my place, first”

Back at the place, after a lot of persuasion, and a good bit of money, Thorn was super stingy, Ajax got his hand of the modded phone.

Relaxing on the sofa, her body spread out along it, dressed in one of Ajax’s shirts and a skirt, Alice was watching tv. On the screen was a show produced by a daughter company of, you guessed it, MetEx. They owned everything, did everything, were everything, these days. Not only did they sell sodas, but they sold vacuum cleaners, tvs, phones, they even had their dirty hands in fast food. However, their main source of income came from drugs, which they worked under the name ‘Californium’, selling every kind of drug and killing every kind of youth with a smile on their wicked faces, bathing in dirty money. But Ajax couldn’t say anything, he wasn’t exactly clean either. In fact, he helped to move some of Californium’s drugs for them.

“Jay. Where’ve you been?” Alice asked, as stunning as ever. Alas, they were just friend, with benefits. It was a mutual decision, since their previous relationship just didn’t work out. Perhaps it was just not the right time.

She had beautiful messy light-blonde hair with ocean-blue eyes that stole all of Ajax’s attention. Not long after they met, they’d started dating. At first, Ajax might have thought it was just another fling, but it wasn’t long until he realised this was the real deal for him. Sadly, she just couldn’t get past what Ajax did; she wanted him to quit, but he refused. At that, their relationship met its end, but they still loved each other’s company, and somehow, their relationship became the confusion it is now.

“Seiji’s bar. Just business” Ajax replied, keeping his eyes fixated on her.

“His bar? I…I thought you quit drinking, Jay” she seemed both hurt and frustrated about that fact. When she met him, he was a hell of a drinker, and not in a good way. Everyday he seemed to get into fights, always coming home bloody and bruised.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“I have. Like I said, strictly business. I’m gonna have to call off our date, if that’s alright?”

Her lips seemed to twitch at his words, before her expression grew stone cold. Though he joked about it being a date, they had planned to go out later.

“Fine” she said with a bit of annoyance, “What business?”

“Business business” he replied, indicating he couldn’t share that, but she remained eager.

“Your business is my business” she started, “Now, what business?”

“I can’t tell you”

“Why’s that?”

“I just can’t” he sighed, “Just please, leave it”

After that, she pondered for a moment before dropping it. She was clearly worried about him, but she knew him well enough to soon brush that anxiety aside, this was Jay after all. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder what the hell it was he couldn’t tell her, but it was likely something to do with his group of crooks. She hated that side of him; the side that stood for everything she didn’t; the side that tore them apart.

“Alright” she sighed, too. “Be safe. When will you be back?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll call you” he waved goodbye, dashing out the door to get back to business. If he talked to her any longer, he might have called the whole thing off. Damned feelings, they always plagued his decisions. If only he could kill them, but that would just be a pretty sad existence, if you could never have fun at all.

When night came, starless as it always was with all the pollution these days, Ajax and Seiji were scouting out Traitor’s house with a few small drones, all the security offline after Ajax’s new phone hijacked the database. Thorn was a damned genius, a shut-in, but a genius.

Watching all the different drone POVs through a home-made headset he’d bought off Thorn a while back, he spotted a few moving objects with it’s thermal scan. Four…six…eight? Nine with Morti. Two against nine, huh? Not ideal, but at least they had the element of surprise. All they had to bet on now is nobody trying to check the cameras, since they’re all frozen. In fairness, it was hard to tell the difference with the lack of activity.

Time to strike.

“You got it?” Ajax asked Seiji, who was aiming a rocket launcher right at Morti’s room.

“Got i-”

Bang.

----------------------------------------

“Ack…” Ajax groaned as he woke up. Looking to his left, the alarm clock read: 7:03.

‘Damn it! How the fuck did I die!’ Ajax inwardly cursed. ‘But I’m alive again. That means I can keep coming back. Good. Wait…does that make me immortal?’ Ajax discarded the thought. However, it did. He was practically immortal now.

Walking into the living room, Ajax didn’t know whether he should be miserable or over-the-moon. Right now, he held an expression of the former.

“Huh” a voice groaned from the sofa. “AJ? You’r-”

“Up early? Yeah. Gonna make a coffee. Also, I need that phone you just modded” Ajax said, not in the mood to live the exact same day again.

“Creepy” Thorn shivered as his words were stolen from his mind. Ajax ignored it and went straight to brewing his coffee. Again, he was deep in thought. Somehow, he had died on the vantage point. Who had seen him? A sniper? But he saw nothing on the drones? Something just wasn’t right about this.

“What’s with the gloomy expression?” Thorn asked, noticing his roommate grimacing as he stirred his coffee.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about something”

“The MetEx job?” Thorn guessed.

“Sort of”

‘What the hell do I do? Killing him is a bust ‘cause of this secret killer, and if I go on the MetEx raid I’m gonna fucking die. How is this fair? How is any of this shit fucking fair?’ Ajax slammed his fist against the counter, causing his roommate to jump up in surprise. Perhaps getting Seiji involved wasn’t the right thing to do. Perhaps he had to do this himself.

Suddenly, an idea came to mind; an insane, reckless idea that he’d never even think of doing if he hadn’t discovered this looping ability, but it just might work. Even if it didn’t, he could do it all again, with all the new information gathered. No matter how many loops it’d take, Morti was getting sent to hell, and it was gonna be by Ajax’s hands.

After downing his morning coffee, he walked back into his room to grab his phone. Sadly, this caused Alice to wake up.

“Jay?” she asked with a yawn as Ajax pocketed his phone.

“Morning, Alice” he smiled before walking back out the room. As he was leaving, she spoke again.

“What are you doing so early?” she asked, confused when looking at the time.

“Just a…little bit of work with Morti. Going over the plans for tomorrow” he thought on the spot.

“Ah…alright. I’m gonna go back to sleep, I’m super tired” she said with her angelic voice as her head dropped back onto the soft pillow, slowly sending her back to the dreamworld.

A moment later, Ajax was out the house, calling someone.

“AJ?” the tired voice asked, “What do you want?”

“Let’s take a look over the plans for tomorrow. I’ll be at your place in twenty”

Morti groaned in frustration. “Inviting yourself over now?”

“Yeah. Be ready to receive me” Ajax said before hanging up. Chances were, in the twenty minutes it would take for Ajax to head over, Morti would send all the others out, since he wouldn’t want to raise suspicion. Also, since Morti needed him for the MetEx raid, he wouldn’t think about killing him just yet.

As he opened one of the many garages in a long row of them, a black motorcycle met Ajax’s eyes with a shark helmet hanging off one of the handlebars. Ah, his trusty ride, and his helmet of pure protection. Slowly, he walked over to his sweet ride, modded to perfection with the teamwork of him and Thorn, he smiled, putting the shark helmet on his head. This would be it. And if it wasn’t, he’d reform the plan and strike again. No matter the number of loops, Morti was dying, and that was that.

Racing down the road, behaving himself; it was a fourty, he was going maybe…sixty? Was he suicidal? ‘Course not. If he died, he didn’t truly die, so he didn’t care. If someone else died, they didn’t really die, so what was there to bother him. Plus, it’s not like his hands weren’t bloody already.

Twenty minutes later, he arrived at Morti’s detached house, which was paid for with money just as clean as himself. Traitor spoke a quick message through his Estech door bell, they had their hands in every pie, as he opened the gates, or rather they opened themselves as Traitor flicked the right switch.

“Do you have your invitation?” Traitor watched him through the small camera in the door bell. “Thought not” he said with a sigh as the gates opened for their guest.

It had begun.